


Jeff Knew

by GoHACoyote



Category: Avengers (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 13:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoHACoyote/pseuds/GoHACoyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Jeff didn't notice Billy was gay, but he knew something not even Rebecca knew about their son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jeff Knew

**Author's Note:**

> Please be patient, i'm not an english speaking person and i'm still taking English classes.
> 
> If you find something weirdly written, please tell me, i'll be always happy to improve my works.

Jeffrey Kaplan considers himself a disorganized man, he is clever and intelligent but those attributes had came with the price of having messy ways in several aspects of his life, that’s why he had spent his years in the medical college living in his father’s crappy van and surviving via coffee and cookies due to his inability to manage the money his parents sent him every month. Rebecca was attracted at first by this though, like someone with a cleaning OCD to a dirty bathroom.

 

His head also has always been a bubbling mess of ideas and information; he likes to think that it made his mind difficult to manipulate by those mind readers, sorcerers and crazy super-powered people like that. That’s why he knew that something was off, when he came back from the hospital to his house expecting to see his heavily pregnant wife and instead was received by an 11 years old boy in wolverine pajamas calling him “dad”.

 

He was pretty sure that the twins in Rebecca’s belly were going to be his first children.

 

“Dad! You have to watch this new ninja turtles’ show! it’s awesome!”

 

The kid’s eyes were glued to the TV screen, so he couldn’t see the expression in Jeff’s face. He was speechless, he was grateful that he has never been a reactive person, if not he could say something stupid he’ll regret later. The long delay of revealed hidden cameras or pre-recorded laughs worried him even more.

 

“Jeff, your son could develop a neglect complex if he can’t share his favorite activities with you, go watch those turtles while I defrost dinner”

 

Rebecca, beautiful Rebecca was still remarkably round, she kissed his lips sweetly and made him react and stop the rush of images of possible alien abduction or magical wave of growth rays that flashed in his confused brain. 

 

“Yes, dear…”

 

Rebecca grabbed his coat and briefcase and put them inside the closet before returning to the kitchen, Jeff walked slowly to the couch where the kid was hugging tightly a pillow, and sat at his side. Over the coffee table in front of them were a closed notebook adorned with x-men stickers, in the lower right corner it had a white rectangle with some writing, his own writing, it said “William Kaplan, 5th grade, class B”. 

 

He inhaled deeply.

 

There was no possibility he hit his head in his way back home and suddenly forgot about 11 years of parenthood, right?, but there he were, sitting next to this strange child, this “William Kaplan” he has never heard of, and who Rebecca has just called “his son”.

 

“How was work dad? fixed some broken hearts?”

 

And the kid kept saying “dad”, and he was asking something, he didn’t know how to answer, he was supposed to sound like a father, what would happen if he say something wrong?, Jeff remembered his father, and tried to imitate his way of talking to him.

 

“not today…” he looked quickly at the notebook “…Billy, just some paperwork and routine checks”

 

“People has been too healthy recently, we need them to eat more greasy burgers if we want this family to prosper when the twins come”

 

So, ok the boy was clever, it didn’t mean he was his son, but made him somehow relax a little. Jeff tried to watch the TV but the panic alarm in the back of his mind didn´t shut up, he glanced at the other couch and spotted a bright red backpack, he reached for it and began packing the school supplies he found over the coffee table, when he picked the notebook he noticed the kid watching at him with curiosity.

 

“Aren´t you going to review that?”

 

“What?”

 

“My homework”

 

“Oh… right, your homework”

 

The kid smiled and went back at his cartoon. Jeff opened the notebook and started looking through every page, reading here and there, and found himself smiling at the lousy calligraphy that oddly resembles at his own, the childish notes and the little drawings at the borders. He didn’t know how much time he spent reading, but he hasn’t reached the last page when Rebecca called them both to dinner.

 

He observed Billy through the entire dinner time. The way he chatted with Rebecca, the way he picked one pea in every peak of the fork before eating them, the way he was too impatient to use properly the knife to cut his steak and instead used his hands to tear it in pieces, nothing in this child seemed bad, or dangerous, he was just an innocent child, in a normal dinner… with his parents. 

 

Jeff could finally turn the panic alarm off.

 

He worked in a hospital, he knew about the crazy stuff that happened out there, every day, radiations, alternate dimensions, super soldiers, mutants, aliens, and everything. He knew there was a possibility he himself experienced some interaction with something like that, he never told Rebecca about it but he felt that it will really happen someday, he just prayed it wasn’t something like getting caught in the middle of an avengers’ battle and die, but he knew.

 

And now, he suddenly has an 11 years old son, out of nowhere. May be there where a woman with powers out there who suddenly found herself incapable of keeping his own child, maybe he was the kid of a murdered family found by a superhero who gave him a second opportunity by magically inserting him in his family. The kid could be out there in the streets, abandoned and helpless, but he was there instead, with them, with a turtle’s show, and x men stickers and bad manners at the table, happy and protected. 

 

That night, when Rebecca was reading at bed, and Billy was already sleeping in his messy room, Jeff decided he will be the father of Billy Kaplan, he will love him and teach him everything he knew, and, as the older son, he will the one inheriting Jeff’s car. He rised from bed an kissed Rebecca on the cheek and lips before wrapping himself in the blankets and surrender to sleep, he mentally thanked God this gift, and promised him and himself he will never tell anyone the truth, Billy will be a Kaplan from that night and forever.


End file.
